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Thursday, November 23, 2006

EU democracy in action

This week's European Voice has a cracking interview with the man behind Nicolas Sarkozy's mini-treaty proposals on the EU Constitution - French MEP Alain Lamassoure. His comments speak for themselves:

"He told European Voice that the premise for Sarkozy’s approach is that anyattempt to relaunch the institutional reforms “could not be allowed to fail”.This meant that EU leaders had to agree not to hold a referendum on a next text,except in Ireland. The constitution would not be renegotiated as such but therewould be an agreement to retain the “heart of the constitution” on which therehad been a strong consensus... As this would be only an ordinary treaty, therewould be no need to “annoy the people” with another referendum, he said."

"The MEP said UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had received the ideas “withinterest” which increased the need to proceed fast with the plans. He said thatcontacts with Blair’s likely successor, Finance Minister Gordon Brown, had been“more complex”."

"Lamassoure rejected the suggestion that Sarkozy was proposing atechnocratic fix to a political problem, saying that the mini-treaty would givemore power to EU citizens. “But in order to do that, we have to go via nationalparliaments,” he said. “It’s not a way to contradict the people.”"

We love the idea that in order to give people a say in the EU it's first necessary to take away their right to a say. They're determined not to let anyone get in the way of their plans - not even Gordon Brown...